🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <D88-JWA.92Aug16211653@dront.nada.kth.se> d88-jwa@dront.nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes:
>
>   And this is no small point.  If you look at most of the programming tools that
>   you talk about as "basic" or "fundamental" that you are worried about having
>   to license, you will see that the vast majority are old enough that, even if
>   they had been patented, they would be public domain now.
>
>Like a host-independent byte order, or hashing to find a match
>in LZ77 compression ?

Who said that nothing *useful* would be under patent?

Some people were claiming that the face of programming would be changed forever
as the most fundamental techniques which all programmer's use (like quicksort,
for example) would require licensing.  I hardly think that the two examples
that you cite can be considered, at this time, to be fundamental techniques
that all (or most) programmer's can be expected to use.

Even if they were,  I never said *all* such techniques would be in the
public domain by now.  I merely said that the *vast majority* would be.

I really think we need to inject some reality here--the reaction I see here
seems to border on hysteria over the "patent menace."


As I have said before, I do *not* know how patents should (or should not) be
applied to algorithms, but let's try to deal approach the question with
rational expectations.

And I'm still waiting to hear an argument as to why inventing an "algorithm"
should be treated any differently than any other invention?

Why is it that patents will cause a total collapse of the programming
profession, though it hasn't caused the downfall of the world when applied to
other inventions?



BTW, for those who were interested, here is the reference to the CACM article:

P. Samuelson, "Why the Look and Feel of Software User Interfaces Should not
   be Protected by Copyright Law," CACM, Vol. 32, No. 5, 563-572 (May 1989).



-- 
J. S. Greenfield                                         greeny@top.cis.syr.edu
(I like to put 'greeny' here, 
but my d*mn system wants a 
*real* name!)                        "What's the difference between an orange?"